Nick Shirley’s recent 42-minute video documentary on the federal benefits fraud generated more than 120 million internet views, prompting a massive wave of praise for the 23-year-old independent journalist for focusing national attention on what is preliminarily estimated to be a staggering $9 billion scandal.

Shirley’s documentary caught the nation’s attention, but in fact the scandal in the American state known for its largely Scandinavian-descended residents being “Minnesota Friendly” has been the focus for seven years of multiple other independent media figures and outlets, including the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo in the months immediately preceding Shirley, as well as the Power Line blog and others for more than a decade.

Even before Power Line first began devoting serious attention to the rampant corruption centered in the state’s huge Somalian immigrant population, a federal grand jury indicted Fozia Sheik Ali on five counts following a joint investigation by state and federal officials launched in 2014. She pled guilty to one felony fraud charge, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and ordered to make restitution of $1.4 million.

Ali was part-owner and director of the Salama Child Care Center and her case has since proven to be a model of the extensive pattern of state and federal benefits fraud. The Minnesota Department of Human Services Inspector-General described the case:

“In May 2015, law enforcement agencies executed a search warrant at the Minneapolis child care center, seizing a large amount of paper and electronic records and interviewing employees, parents and center owners. Investigators documented that from December 2013 through May 2015, Salama and Ali regularly billed [Child-Care Assistance Program] CCAP for far more children than were actually cared for, and that Ali and her family were the largest recipients of the fraudulently obtained program funds.”

It soon became clear that the Salama case was but a small part of a vastly bigger problem and one that encompassed national security worries in addition to massive fraud in federally funded child care, home assistance and multiple other benefit areas. Scott Johnson, a co-founder (with John Hinderaker) of the Minnesota-based Power Line, one of the pioneers in the blog movement that began in the late 1990s, offered this observation in a May 2018 City Journal article based on prior Power Line reporting and meant to alert readers nationwide:

“When it was noted that the carry-on bags of multiple airline passengers traveling from Minneapolis to Somalia contained millions of dollars in case, on a regular basis, law enforcement was naturally curious to know where the money came from and where it was going. It soon emerged that millions of taxpayer dollars and possibly much more had been stolen through a massive scam of Minnesota’s social services sector, specifically through fraudulent daycare claims. To make matters worse, the money appears to have wound up in areas of Somalia controlled by al-Shabab, the Islamic Jihadist group responsible for numerous terrorist outrages.”

As things progressed following the Salama conviction and revelations about the airport bags of cash for a terrorist outfit in Somalia, numerous additional tentacles of the pervasive fraud centered in the Somalia community have since come to light, including several via COVID pandemic relief programs and regulatory actions during President Joe Biden’s tenure in the Oval Office, beginning in 2021.

In a case known as “Feeding Our Future,” at least $250 million was found to have been stolen from two federal nutrition assistance programs, thanks in part to COVID-related waivers issued by federal officials. As Johnson explained in a March 2025 Washington Free Beacon post:

“The Feeding Our Future case represents old-fashioned corruption of two federal nutrition programs. Feeding Our Future was a small nonprofit that served as a ‘sponsor’ of ‘sites’ such as day cares that participated in the programs. In the COVID era from April 2020 until January 2022, Feeding Our Future along with its sites and site vendors found it remarkably easy to bilk the programs out of millions of dollars a month by filing false claims for reimbursement supported by false meal counts, fake rosters and bogus invoices.”

The Feeding Our Future investigation has seen more than 70 defendants charged, 37 have pled guilty and seven have been convicted in two separate trials, according to Johnson. More are expected from this and related investigations.

Another key unappreciated aspect of the pre-Shirley nature of the Minnesota fraud scandal is the fact that career federal investigators and prosecutors have maintained their intensive digging, indicting and convicting across multiple presidential administrations and Congresses under the control of both political parties. The Samala investigation was launched during the Obama administration in 2014, continued throughout President Donald Trump’s first term, and kept up through the Biden years. Democrat Mark Dayton was Minnesota’s governor in 2014, and he was succeeded in 2019 by the present governor, 2024 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Tim Waltz.

More recently, during the first year of Trump’s second term, he has vowed total support for the investigators, which include personnel from the Department of Justice, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the IRS. Major reforms in benefit program administration are likely to result from the White House and from Congress, which shortly begins what will undoubtedly be controversial and widely publicized hearings on the scandal in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).

Also worthy of note are the whistleblowers in the Minnesota state government who have been tipping off investigators and journalists from the very beginning of the scandal.

Dustin Gage is another Minnesota-focused independent journalist who began reporting on the scandal via X in 2022. In a recent tweet, Gage observed that “even before any of that, there was @AlphaNews and @MNThinkTank and the guys at Powerline Blog. They are the real unsung heroes. I simply helped amplify their work until I started doing my own independent work.”

Gage added that he does not “care who gets the ‘credit. I do not think anyone in Minnesota cares. We are just happy the national media is finally paying attention. I just get a kick out of the handful of national folks trying to plant their flags.”

In the meantime, Minnesota is neither the only state with significant Somalian immigration population nor the only state government receiving hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars every year via Washington’s social services Leviathan. That fact has prompted independent journalists to begin examining other states, but they aren’t necessarily welcome.

Consider the statement issued Friday by Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown (D):

“My office has received outreach from members of the Somali community after reports of home-based daycare providing being harassed and accused of fraud with little to no fact-checking. We are in touch with the state Department of Children, Youth and Families regarding claims being pushed online and the harassment reported by daycare providers. Showing up on someone’s porch threatening or harassing them isn’t an investigation.”

Those who believe they have been thus victimized are advised by Brown to contact the Hate Crimes Hotline in his office. Apparently, Brown somehow knows with certainty that none of the referenced incidents involve fact-based journalistic inquiries, as well as how “real” independent journalists are supposed to go about their reporting chores.